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The Secret to Year-Round Perfect Legs: Urban Decay's New Body Balm

It’s Labor Day weekend—and while most women are busy admiring their long, tan legs and sun-kissed knees, I am left to contemplate how, for yet another summer, I have managed to retain the snow white color of an albino rabbit.

Anglo-Saxon to the core, I do not bronze or brown in the sun. If I were a paint chip, I would be something like “cotton” or, only slightly less desirable perhaps, “white mantel.” Fortunately, I discovered body bronzer a few years back, starting with Philosophy’s The Big Skinny, which turned my legs the perfect shade of golden-brown. Unlike a traditional self-tanner, it didn’t streak or smell, and it didn’t rub off on anything. In fact, it was nothing short of brilliant. When the company stopped making it a few years later, I stocked up on half a dozen bottles in a scenario that recalled the kind of mania more often reserved for the discontinuation of a favorite bra.

A series of relatively successful experiments involving BB Cream for the body followed suit, including Orlane Refining Leg Care (also tragically discontinued) and Jergens BB Cream which contain light-reflective particles and moisturizers to make skin more even-toned, if not less pale.

Then, in early August, a package arrived at the office. Inside was Urban Decay’s body beauty balm—a bronzing formula that contains a light, tawny brown tint and light-reflective particles that made my legs instantly golden in the kind of way you can’t mess up but did not (very important) sparkle in direct sunlight.

It is, hands down, the perfect 60-second antidote to a fading tan (or, in my case, faking the tan you never had). Buy it now in bulk, stow it away in chipmunk-worthy levels for the fall, and keep your tights in storage. Possibly forever.